My friend Jill...

... has started her very first blog.  Every year we get a wonderful handpainted christmas card and I get a beautiful birthday card.  I swear Jill seems to be good at everything she does!

Please go and pay her blog a visit here:
http://jillkeeley.blogspot.co.uk/

And you'll hear about the inspiration and stories behind her artwork... she can tell a good tale :)

TUSAL - November 2012

Hello there!

I'm a few days late with the blog post, but my TUSAL pictures actually were taken on the correct day.  (If you don't know what the TUSAL is, the link is down there, yes on the right).

Here are my threads from my stitching so far.  Finally some lighter colours as I have been working on the moon part of my Moonlit Waters HAED.  It's going much faster than the other pages and I am enjoying this page a great deal when I have time to stitch on it.  I'm hoping to have page 3 finished by the end of November, so wish me luck... it'll be a challenge, but I'm going for it.

Snapshots

With all the social media networks out there nowadays it's pretty easy to get sucked in and spend all your time updating whatever status or throwing tweets out into the big wide world.  I think my favourite of them all however has to be Instagram.

If you haven't heard of this one, it's sort of like a cross between twitter and facebook but for posting photos.  There is functionality to 'like' photos, follow other people, look at the latest photos on a particular topic (using hashtags) and post comments on people's photos.  Also some photo manipulation filters, although there are many other photo apps out there as well (a little shout to the guys at Woodcamera, which is one of my favourites).  The app can also post directly into Twitter and Facebook if you use those.

I'm pretty nosey, so something which allows a little peek into people's lives and what they see as they go about the world is just fantastic for me and for something that started off pretty modestly, it seems to have picked up in a huge way and is now on its way to being acquired by Facebook (let's hope they don't ruin it, eh?). I tend to use it when I'm out and about or with time on my hands or standing somewhere where I think 'wouldn't it be fun for someone on the other side of the world to see what I'm seeing right now'.  One of the great things about the app is that it's FREE!!

Until a few days ago, the Instagram application was only available to those people with smartphones, the idea being you take a photo on your phone quickly and easily, but then you can instantly upload it into the app, apply filters if you wish and anyone who follows you will see it on a timeline of posts of their followers immediately (that's how fast things move these days).   It is coming to the web also, although for the moment photos can still only be posted from mobile devices - you need to have it on a mobile device and therefore have an account in order to be able to log in and interact on the web, although it is possible to look at public profiles on the web without needing to sign up.

One of the things I find most interesting is that professional photographers, amateurs and total beginners alike can snap an interesting photo and they are using very similar tools.  When Sandy approached the East Coast of the US, I could see in real time the events unfolding from people who were actually there, and I think that is one of the most powerful uses of this tool, although I suppose the downside is that it is possible to fake photos and hard to tell if this has happened.

During the East Coast chaos, Time magazine gave 5 journalists access to its Instagram feed and one of those photographs was chosen for a front cover shot, which is yet more proof that social media is changing how we interact with the world and each other.  You can read a little more about this here.

I suggest you go take a look, have a nosey... if you have a smartphone, download the app and play - It is honestly one of the most fun apps I have on my phone!!  Their blog is also pretty interesting, with challenges to complete. (and if you are up for a challenge there are many many other groups on Instagram also doing this).

The only slight irritation at the moment for me are the spam comments so hopefully the team are working on a way to be able to delete those, but for now you just have to ignore them.

Here's my page...feel free to follow it!

http://instagram.com/ricketyjo or user ricketyjo from the mobile app.

Moonlit Kitties

Yay! Halloween is here!

The flat is all nicely decorated with banners and witches hats and a pumpkin and there are gingerbread ghostie biscuits.

And I've also finished this Moonlit Kitties design from Mill Hill for my in-laws!  But there were so many beads in it.  Many more than it looks like from the photo!

TUSAL - October 2012

It's time for the Totally Useless Stitch-A-Long for October.  Yes, I believe that I'm actually doing it on the correct date for a change!!! (you can read all about TUSAL via the button on the right of my page)

Here's my jar of ratty threads... You'll notice a fair bit of orange in there since I'm making a small halloween gift for the in-laws.

I've been stitching during most of my spare time so I feel like I'm making progress for once...although I wish it was on my HAED project... no matter though, it's all good.

Seeya next time!!

Knitting and Stitching Show 2012

Hooray!!! It's that time again!!!

The Knitting and Stitching Show is currently on at Alexandra Palace in London (11th-14th October), then moving on to Dublin (1st-4th Nov) and Harrogate (22nd-25th Nov).

I got a severe ticking off after last time, and I have so so much stuff already waiting to be stitched, so I was determined not to load myself down with too much this year.  But I did still want to visit, and see some of the exhibition pieces.

The stands which stood out for me were of course the Mr X Stitch one, who curated a stand full of interesting big and little stitching with a wide range of materials.  I loved the stitched car door and the real door and he even personalised a book for me :)

The other exhibition stand which was incredible, as I expected was the Royal School of Needlework.  Sadly, no photography allowed on many of the stands, including this one, but the pieces were outstanding, beautiful, wonderfully and perfectly crafted.  Way to make me feel like my work is totally inadequate!!!  There really is no substitute for going to see the finished pieces in person.

Anyway, I was good.  I came away with only one bag of stash.  This contained:

One Table Magnifying Lamp - finally a mains powered lamp and magnifier.  Sadly, the floor standing ones all seem to have enormous bases, which won't fit under my sofa, so at least if I have a table one, I can work on some of my smaller pieces during the dark evenings.

 Some new xmas card designs from the Nutmeg Company - these went down so well when I made them for a previous xmas, so I thought I'd buy some more!

A couple of small Michael Powell designs.  I've liked these for a while, so I decided to get a couple of small pieces to work on.

Sparklies fabric!
The stand had an amazing large piece of orange hand dyed fabric with a black dragon stitched onto it.  I bought 5 pieces of various hand dyed fabrics, the pale green (sparkling rainforest) and lilac (Lilac Ice) with opalescent sparkles in the fabric.  I also got Slate, Fire and Black Dahlia.  These are all small pieces just to see what I can do with different fabrics.

And that's it!  I can't wait to rip all the packets open and get started.

Moonlit Waters Page 2 complete!!

Woohoo!

I'm so glad to see the back of this page, I can't believe it's taken me 5 months.  So much confetti around the trees, but I've kept going through it and it's done... hooray! Just 34 pages left to go :)

Having a little change for a while as I'm stitching up something halloweeny for the in-laws next...Feel like I need a little break from the big piece and to have other finishes this year.  But first, I'm going to have a weekend off.